Se encuentra usted aquí

Representativeness of the European social partner organisations: Education

National Contribution:

Observatory: EurWORK

Topic:

Relaciones laborales,

Representativeness,

Diálogo social,

Social partners,

Date of Publication: 20 Abril 2011

About

Author:

Institution:

This study sets out to provide the necessary information for establishing and assisting sectoral social dialogue in the education sector. The report has three main parts: a summary of the sector’s economic background; an analysis of the social partner organisations in all EU Member States, with special emphasis on their membership, their role in collective bargaining/employment regulation and public policy, and their national and European affiliations; and an analysis of the relevant European organisations, in particular their membership composition and their capacity to negotiate. The aim of the EIRO series of representativeness studies is to identify the relevant national and supranational social partner organisations in the field of industrial relations in selected sectors. The impetus for these studies arises from the goal of the European Commission to recognise the representative social partner organisations to be consulted under the EC Treaty provisions. Hence, this study is designed to provide the basic information required to establish and evaluate sectoral social dialogue.

The study was compiled on the basis of individual national reports submitted by the EIRO correspondents. The text of each of these national reports is available below. The national reports were drawn up in response to a questionnaire and should be read in conjunction with it.

Objectives of study

The aim of this representativeness study is to identify the relevant national and supranational associational actors – that is the trade unions and employer associations – in the field of industrial relations in the education sector, and to show how these actors relate to the sector’s European interest associations of labour and business. The impetus for this study, and for similar studies in other sectors, arises from the aim of the European Commission to identify the representative social partner associations to be consulted under the provisions of the EC Treaty. Hence, this study seeks to provide basic information needed to set up sectoral social dialogue. The effectiveness of the European social dialogue depends on whether its participants are sufficiently representative in terms of the sector’s relevant national actors across the EU Member States. Hence, only European associations which meet this precondition will be admitted to the European social dialogue.

Against this background, the study first identifies the relevant national social partner organisations in the education sector, subsequently analysing the structure of the sector’s relevant European organisations, in particular their membership composition. This involves clarifying the unit of analysis at both the national and European level of interest representation. The study includes only organisations whose membership domain is ‘sector-related’ (see below). At both national and European levels, a multiplicity of associations exist which are not considered as social partner organisations as they do not essentially deal with industrial relations. Thus, there is a need for clear-cut criteria that enable analysis to differentiate the social partner organisations from other associations.

As regards the national-level associations, classification as a sector-related social partner organisation implies fulfilling one of two criteria: the associations must be either a party to ‘sector-related’ collective bargaining or a member of a ‘sector-related’ European association of business or labour that is on the Commission’s list of European social partner organisations consulted under Article 154 of the EC Treaty, and/or which participates in the sector-related European social dialogue.

Taking affiliation to a European social partner organisation as sufficient to determine a national association as a social partner does not necessarily imply that the association is involved in industrial relations in its own country. Although this selection criterion may seem odd at first glance, a national association that is a member of a European social partner organisation will become involved in industrial relations matters through its membership of the European organisation. Furthermore, it is important to assess whether the national affiliates to the European social partner organisations are engaged in industrial relations in their respective country. Affiliation to a European social partner organisation and/or involvement in national collective bargaining are of utmost importance to the European social dialogue, since they are the two constituent mechanisms that can systematically connect the national and European levels.

The education sector tends to at least partially cover a public sector segment of a country’s economy. For the comparative analysis, the reference to collective bargaining as a criterion for selection of national social partner organisations raises a conceptual problem which applies to the public sector, or certain parts of it in several countries, where collective bargaining in the genuine sense is not established.

Collective bargaining in the genuine sense implies joint regulation of employment terms following negotiations between parties with equal bargaining rights. From a legal perspective, genuine collective bargaining means that the law on collective bargaining which applies to the private sector also applies to the public sector. Genuine bargaining does not hold true for the public sector if the statutory power to regulate the employment terms unilaterally remains with the state bodies. In these circumstances, the trade unions can only enter a process of consultation or de facto negotiations with the authorities. There are also borderline cases in that unilateral regulation is given in formal terms, whereas the outcome of de facto negotiations or consultation is generally regarded as binding in practice.

This conceptual problem is central to this study since involvement in collective bargaining is a constitutive property of a social partner organisation (as outlined above). Applying the concept of bargaining in the genuine sense to the education sector, which usually covers a large public sector segment, would thus a priori exclude this segment and its numerous associations in a notable number of countries. Instead, this study adopts a less strict concept that refers to whether trade unions in the public sector can exert a notable influence on the regulation of the employment terms via collective bargaining in the genuine sense or a recurrent practice of either de facto negotiations or consultation. Associations that meet this condition are registered as relevant. For each of these associations, this study documents whether this relevance is based on collective bargaining or de facto negotiations and consultation. Thus this study subsumes genuine bargaining, de facto negotiations and consultation under ‘collective regulation’. Any trade union and employer association involved in sector-related collective regulation is thus included in this study.

In terms of the selection criteria for the European organisations, this report includes those sector-related European social partner organisations that are on the Commission’s list of consultation as well as any other European association which has under its umbrella sector-related national social partner organisations – as defined above. Therefore, the aim of identifying the sector-related national and European social partner organisations applies both a ‘top–down’ and ‘bottom–up’ approach.

Definitions

For the purpose of this study, the education sector is defined in terms of the Statistical Classification of Economic Activities in the European Community (Nomenclature statistique des activités économiques dans la Communauté européenne,NACE) (Rev. 2), to ensure the cross-national comparability of the findings. More specifically, the education sector is defined as embracing NACE (Rev. 2) P.85, including:

pre-primary education;

primary education;

general secondary education;

technical and vocational secondary education;

post-secondary non-tertiary education;

tertiary education;

sports and recreation education;

cultural education;

driving school activities;

other education n.e.c. [not elsewhere classified];

educational support activities.

This definition of the education sector is activity-based and is irrespective of the legal form of the unit that performs these activities (private law enterprise, public law body, authority, etc.). Moreover, depending on the country, these activities may be organised by any level of administration, including the central state, the regional authorities and the local state. For further details of the NACE classification system, please go to the webpage of RAMON, Eurostat’s Metadata Server. A description of the education sector as demarcated by NACE P.85 is provided by the background note in the Annex.

The domains of the trade unions and employer organisations and scope of the relevant collective agreements are likely to vary from this precise NACE demarcation. The study therefore includes all trade unions, employer organisations and multi-employer collective agreements that are ‘sector-related’ in terms of any of the following four aspects or patterns:

congruence – the domain of the organisation or scope of the collective agreement is identical to the NACE demarcation, as specified above;

sectionalism – the domain or scope covers only a certain part of the sector, as defined by the aforementioned NACE demarcation, while no group outside the sector is covered;

overlap – the domain or scope covers the entire sector along with parts of one or more other sectors. The study does not include general associations which do not deal with sector-specific matters;

sectional overlap – the domain or scope covers part of the sector plus parts of one or more other sectors.

At European level, the European Commission established a European Social Dialogue Committee for the education sector on 11 June 2010. The social partners participating in social dialogue on behalf of the workers in the sector are the European Trade Union Committee for Education (ETUCE), the European Federation of Public Service Unions (EPSU) and the European Confederation of Independent Trade Unions (CESI). The European Federation of Education Employers (EFEE), which was set up in February 2009, represents employers.

These organisations are the reference associations with regard to analysing the European level and, for the purposes of this study, affiliation to one of these European organisations is one sufficient criterion for classifying a national association as a social partner organisation. However, the constituent criterion is sector-related membership. This is important in the case of EPSU and CESI due to their multi-sectoral domain and this study includes only those affiliates of EPSU and CESI whose domain relates to the education sector.

In the case of EFEE, this organisation is an umbrella of national ministries of education, associations of local governments and public agencies. In line with the ‘top–down’ approach, all the national EFEE affiliates, irrespective of their legal form of organisation, are therefore listed in this report. The particularly important role of EFEE in the European sectoral social dialogue will is discussed further in the report.

Collection of data

The collection of quantitative data, such as those on membership, is essential for investigating the representativeness of the social partner organisations. Unless cited otherwise, this study draws on the country studies provided by the EIRO national centres. It is often difficult to find precise quantitative data. In such cases, rough estimates are provided rather than leaving a question blank, given the practical and political relevance of this study. However, if there is any doubt over the reliability of an estimate, this is noted.

In principle, quantitative data may stem from three sources:

official statistics and representative survey studies;

administrative data, such as membership figures provided by the respective organisations, which are then used for calculating the density rate on the basis of available statistical figures on the potential membership of the organisation;

personal estimates made by representatives of the respective organisations.

While the data sources of the economic figures cited in the report are generally statistics, the figures in respect of the organisations are usually either administrative data or estimates. Furthermore, it should be noted that several country studies also present data on trade unions and employer associations that do not meet the above definition of a sector-related social partner organisation, in order to give a complete picture of the sector’s associational ‘landscape’. For the above substantive reasons, as well as for methodological reasons of cross-national comparability, such trade unions and employer associations will not be considered in this report, even though they are listed in the country reports.

Structure of report

The study consists of three main parts, beginning with a brief summary of the sector’s economic background. The report then analyses the relevant social partner organisations in all 27 EU Member States (EU27), with the notable exception of France for which no country report has been delivered. In the case of France, only the social partner organisations that could be identified through the ‘top–down’ approach are listed (that is, the sector-related affiliates of the relevant European organisations). The third part of the analysis considers the representative associations at European level.

Each section contains a brief introduction explaining the concept of representativeness in greater detail, followed by the study findings. As representativeness is a complex issue, it requires separate consideration at national and European level for two reasons. First, the method applied by national regulations and practices to capture representativeness has to be taken into account. Secondly, the national and European organisations differ in their tasks and the scope of their activities. The concept of representativeness must therefore be suited to this difference.

Finally, it is important to note the difference between the research and political aspects of this study. While providing data on the representativeness of the organisations under consideration, the report does not reach any definite conclusion on whether the representativeness of the European social partner organisations and their national affiliates is sufficient for admission to the European social dialogue. The reason for this is that defining criteria for adequate representativeness is a matter for political decision rather than an issue of research analysis.

Economic background

To understand the sector’s system of interest representation in general and the system of industrial relations in particular, it is important to highlight some of its properties.

The sector is characterised by a high degree of segmentation in terms of both education providers and funding institutions. In many countries, apart from the state bodies that constitute the main pillar of the national education system, there is a range of church institutions and private law organisations operating educational establishments at any level.

This institutional fragmentation translates into a strong segmentation of the labour market, depending on the degree of diversity of the training systems for the distinct groups of teachers and on the degree of centralisation of employment regulations. In countries where pre-service training systems vary widely between the different levels of education, both the occupational profiles and working conditions of the teachers at each educational level tend to be quite diverse. Such a situation can give rise to a strong fragmentation of interest representation, in particular on the employees’ side.

As well as the hierarchical structure of the education systems, a gender-related segmentation of the education sector can be observed. Although the percentage of women among educational staff has generally continued to rise over the past few decades, women still tend to outnumber men at the lower levels of education (Siniscalco, 2002). In general, the qualification of most education employees is high, since primary school teachers are now required to obtain a tertiary qualification in virtually all Member States.

The European Commission has placed much emphasis on the education issue during the past decade, acknowledging that Europe’s competitiveness in terms of (knowledge) economy rests ultimately on the quality of education across Member States. The vision of a knowledge-based European economy is programmatically laid down in the Lisbon strategy as well as in the current Europe 2020 strategy.

However, rhetoric commitments to enhance the educational systems at all levels have frequently conflicted with budgetary constraints, in particular in the light of the global economic recession since 2008. The first effects of reductions in government revenues and thus expenditure on education (manifest in cuts in teaching posts) have already been reported from France and the UK. Other countries such as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovenia as well as the UK have seen anti-crisis protests – involving, amongst others, public sector teachers – against envisaged cuts in government spending on education and/or wage freezes (ILO, 2009).

As education is a prerequisite for a modern state to operate, all 27 Member States record sector-related activities. Therefore, this study covers all Member States, but because there is no information from France, it presents only a limited picture of the sector. Tables 1 and 2 give an overview of developments from 1996 to 2007, presenting several indicators for employment which are important to industrial relations and the social dialogue. Note that the employment figures in some country reports do not refer exactly to the sector definition used in this study because the national sector definitions in these countries differ somewhat from the NACE definition outlined above. Therefore, the employment figures are not strictly comparable across countries but nevertheless allow for a longitudinal perspective.

In 15 of the 19 countries for which data are available, total employment in the sector expanded between 1996 and 2007 (comparative data are not available for Belgium, Bulgaria, Germany, Hungary, Malta, the Netherlands and Portugal) (Table 1). Likewise, the number of employees grew in 15 countries, whereas a decline is reported in four cases (the Czech Republic, Latvia, Romania and Slovakia) (Table 2). In some countries (Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden and the UK), the number of employees grew by at least 30% between 1996 and 2007.

In all countries for which comparable data are available apart from Bulgaria and Italy, the number of employees either corresponds to or comes close to the total number in employment. This result does not come as a surprise given that employment relations are highly standardised in large parts of the (public) education systems in line with the country’s legal and institutional traditions. Only at the periphery of national education systems such as the private adult education segment may non-standard employment prevail in some countries.

Women represent the majority of employees in the sector in all the countries recording related statistics, in most countries recording a share of about two-thirds of the total sectoral workforce and even more (Tables 1 and 2). Moreover, the number of female employees has been increasing in most countries since 1996. The predominance of female employment in all countries can be traced back to the fact that employment in the lower levels of education (particularly pre-primary and primary) is an almost exclusive domain of women in many countries, whereas men tend to be overrepresented only in some segments of the relatively small higher education sector.

Table 2 also indicates that the education sector represents a notable share of total employment. In particular, this applies to the share in the total number of employees, with a percentage of up to around 10% or 11% in some countries such as Belgium, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Sweden and the UK (the extraordinarily high figures of above 20% for the Netherlands must be treated with caution since these figures have not been adjusted for an obviously extremely high proportion of part-time work). Between 1996 and 2007, this percentage increased in 10 of the 18 countries for which related data are available and declined in eight countries (Austria, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania and Slovakia). This outcome in terms of relative numbers somewhat qualifies the sector’s expansion in terms of absolute numbers as outlined above.

Table 1: Total employment in education sector, 1996 and 2007

Total employment

Male employment

Female employment

1996

2007

1996

2007

1996

2007

AT

223,624a,c

237,800b,c

n.a.

71,700b

n.a.

166,200b

BE

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

BG

n.a.

202,300b

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

CY

9,515

12,739

4,000

3,999

5,515

8,740

CZ

338,700

286,370b

82,040

70,550b

256,660

215,820b

DE

n.a.

2,397,000b

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

DK

192,665e

206,716b

79,018e

81,288b

113,647e

125,505b

EE

54,800

59,900b

11,400

12,200b

43,400

47,700b

EL

216,249

315,249b

84,277

114,522b

132,313

200,725b

ES

900,246a

1,121,791b

339,341a

398,240b

559,728a

723,551b

FI

136,834

162,669

47,784

54,127

89,050

108,542

HU

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

IE

92,600e

140,700

33,300e

38,500

59,300e

103,000

IT

1,836,200

1,906,800f

569,222

514,836f

1,266,978

1,391,964f

LT

142,600g

148,500b

33,200g

31,600b

109,400g

116,900b

LU

~10,000h

~14,300

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

LV

104,000

93,200b

22,000

19,100b

82,000

74,100b

MT

n.a.

14,828

n.a.

5,366

n.a.

9,462

NLi

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

PL

911,000

1,201,000b

n.a.

286,000b

n.a.

916,000b

PT

~212,000

n.a.

~67,000

n.a.

~145,000

n.a.

RO

~441,000

~412,000b

~140,679

~130,604b

~300,321

~281,396b

SE

266,782

450,795

88,045

112,234

178,737

338,561

SI

52,022

60,033b

17,029

13,609b

34,993

46,424b

SK

178,493

163,789b

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

UK

2,039,971g

3,037,823j

~670,000g

~1,000,000j

~1,370,000g

~2,035,000j

Notes: * In some cases, national sector definitions are not fully identical with those used in this study. For details, see the country reports.

The dual system of employment relationships in its public segment (a core property of the sector) is particularly important to how its system of industrial relations is structured. Traditionally, at least some of the public education employees in some continental European countries enjoy a public law employment relationship with special terms, distinct from that of private law employment relationships. Such public servants are usually hired through specific procedures (competitive exams etc.) and subject to certain service regulations laid down by statute. Within this concept, the alleged loyalty of the civil servant to the state authorities rules out any possibility of conflicts of interest between the employer (that is, the state authority) and the employee. Therefore, national industrial relations systems may have refused to recognise the rights of these employees to collective bargaining rights and the right to take industrial action. Instead of free negotiations on the terms and conditions of employment, these are unilaterally determined by the relevant authorities, albeit usually granting more favourable provisions compared to those common among private law employees.

However, employees who are subject to ordinary private law employment contracts are also part, or in some countries the only category, of the public education system. The share of this group within the public education sector labour force has been increasing for many years while the number of civil servants has been declining. Moreover, the governments in many countries have sought to harmonise employment relations between public law and private law employees in an attempt to save on labour costs in public administration in general and public education in particular.

National level of interest representation

In many Member States, statutory regulations refer explicitly to the concept of representativeness when assigning certain rights of interest representation and public governance to trade unions and/or employer organisations. The most important rights addressed by such regulations include:

formal recognition as a party to collective bargaining;

extension of the scope of a multi-employer collective agreement to employers not affiliated to the signatory employer organisation;

participation in public policy and tripartite bodies of social dialogue.

Under these circumstances, representativeness is normally measured by the membership strength of the organisations. For instance, statutory extension provisions usually allow for extension of collective agreements to unaffiliated employers only when the signatory trade union and employer association represent 50% or more of the employees within the agreement’s domain.

As outlined above, the representativeness of the national social partner organisations is of interest to this study in terms of the capacity of their European umbrella organisations for participation in European social dialogue. Apart from their membership strength, the role of the national actors in collective bargaining/collective employment regulation and public policymaking constitutes another important component of representativeness. The effectiveness of the European social dialogue tends to increase with the growing ability of the national affiliates of the European organisations to regulate the employment terms and influence national public policies affecting the sector.

A cross-national comparative analysis shows a generally positive correlation between the bargaining role of the social partners and their involvement in public policy (Traxler, 2004). Social partner organisations that are engaged in multi-employer bargaining are incorporated in state policies to a significantly greater extent than their counterparts in countries where multi-employer bargaining is lacking. This can be attributed to the fact that only multi-employer agreements matter in macroeconomic terms, providing an incentive for governments to persist in seeking the cooperation of the social partner organisations. If single-employer bargaining prevails in a country, none of the collective agreements will have a noticeable effect on the economy due to their limited scope. As a result, the basis for generalised tripartite policy concertation will be absent.

However, some caveats have to be made in terms of the methodology when applied to the public segment of the education sector. There are only a few employer organisations (with an encompassing membership domain) in the public segment of the education sector, since in most cases, it is the public authorities or related bodies which act as employer representatives vis-à-vis the trade unions. Hence, at least with regard to the employers’ side, a concept of representativeness based on the existence of free interest organisations on both sides of the industry is not fully applicable here. However, at least some of the public sector employees of the sector are excluded from formal bargaining in many countries. Moreover, where collective bargaining takes place in the public segment of education (involving, for instance, a ministry or an authority as the employer), it is often difficult to distinguish clearly between single- and multi-employer bargaining. Therefore, the criterion of formal recognition of an interest organisation as a party to collective bargaining as well as the incidence of multi-employer bargaining as an indicator for the impact of the social partners on public policymaking affecting the sector are of only limited significance to the public segment of the education sector. These criteria are reasonably applicable only in industrial relations systems where notable sector-related collective bargaining exists – which is usually the case in the private education sector. As this study covers both the public and the private segments of the education sector, the concept of representativeness is extended in that industrial relations actors involved not only in genuine bargaining but also in other forms of employment regulation, including de facto negotiations and consultation practices (see above), are taken into consideration.

In summary, representativeness in the education sector is a multi-dimensional concept that embraces three basic elements:

the membership domain and strength of the social partner organisations;

their role in collective bargaining and collective employment regulation;

their role in public policymaking.

Membership domains and strength

The membership domain of an organisation, as formally established by its constitution or name, distinguishes its potential members from other groups that the organisation does not claim to represent. As already explained, this study considers only those organisations whose domain relates to the education sector. However, there is insufficient room in this report to delineate the domain demarcations of all the organisations in detail. Instead, the report notes how they relate to the sector by classifying them according to the four patterns of ‘sector-relatedness’ specified earlier.

A differentiation exists between membership strength in terms of the absolute number of members and strength in relative terms. Research usually refers to relative membership strength as the density; in other words, the ratio of actual to potential members.

A difference also arises between trade unions and employer organisations in relation to measuring membership strength. Trade union membership simply means the number of unionised persons. In addition to taking the total membership of a trade union as an indicator of its strength, it is also reasonable to break down this membership total according to gender. However, measuring the membership strength of employer organisations is more complex since they organise collective entities that employ employees. In this case, therefore, two possible measures of membership strength may be used – one referring to the companies and bodies themselves, and the other to the employees working in the member companies/bodies of an employer organisation.

For a sector study such as this, measures of membership strength of both the trade unions and employer organisations also have to consider how the membership domains relate to the sector. If a domain is not congruent with the sector demarcation, the organisation’s total density (the density refers to its overall domain) may differ from sector-specific density (the organisation’s density referring to the sector).

When looking at sector density, it is important to differentiate between an organisation’s ‘sectoral’ density on the one hand and its ‘sectoral domain’ density on the other. Whereas the former measures the ratio of the total number of members of an organisation in the sector to the number of employees in the sector (as demarcated by the NACE classification), the latter indicates the total number of members of an organisation in the sector in relation to the number of employees who work in that part of the sector covered by the organisation’s domain. The sectoral domain density must be higher than the sectoral density if an organisation organises only a particular part of the sector; that is, where the organisation’s membership domain is either sectionalist or sectionalistically overlapping in relation to the sector.

This report first presents the data on the domains and membership strength of the trade unions and then considers those of the employer organisations.

Trade unions

Data on the domains and membership strength of trade unions in the education sector in the 27 Member States are summarised in Table 3. The table lists all trade unions that meet at least one of the two criteria for classification as a sector-related social partner organisation; for France, only those sector-related trade unions are listed that could be identified by applying the ‘top–down’ approach are listed.

All Member States have least one sector-related trade union. A total of 216 sector-related trade unions could be identified. Table 4 presents information for these trade unions on collective bargaining, consultation and affiliations to national and European bodies.

Only seven (3.3%) of the 213 trade unions for which related data are available have demarcated their domain in a way which is more or less congruent with the sector definition. This underscores the fact that statistical definitions of business activities tend to differ from the lines along which employees identify common interests and band together in trade unions – in particular in a sector, such as education, with strong labour market segmentation.

The domain of 62.0% of the trade unions is sectional in relation to the demarcation of the education sector. The corresponding figures for domain overlaps and sectional overlaps are 3.3% and 31.5%, respectively. The clear predominance of sectionalism primarily emanates from the occupational differentiation of this large sector. In countries with strong occupational groups (for example, teachers at each level of the education system), these are often differentiated by the type of employer (as private law, public law, government level, type of funding institution, etc.). Administrative staff and school management are also traditionally represented by distinct, highly specialised trade unions. In some countries (for example, Portugal and Spain), sectionalism is also a result of the local/regional orientation of a trade union.

This fragmentation of the organisational structure of trade unionism in the education sector explains the high numbers of sector-related trade unions in some countries. Sectionalist domain overlaps occur when a trade union specialises in certain groups of education employees, for example:

public sector employees as is the case of the Union of Public Employees (GÖD) in Austria, the Public Services Union (ACV-Openbare diensten/CSC Services publics) in Belgium and the Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors (JHL) of Finland;

municipal workers as is the case of the Municipal Worker’s Union (Kommunal) of Sweden and National Union of Local Government Employees (STAL) of Portugal;

white-collar workers as is the case of the Union of Salaried Employees, Graphical Workers and Journalists (GPA-djp) in Austria and the Christian White-collar Workers in Trade and Industry (part of the Christian Federation of Trade Unions (DHV-CGB) in Germany;

specific professions, for example:

managerial staff as is the case of Association for Managerial and Professional Staff (Ledarna) in Sweden;

‘cultural’ workers as is the case of the Education, Science and Culture Trade Union of Slovenia (ESTUS);

driving instructors as is the case of Austria’s vida and the Finnish Transport Workers’ Union (AKT).

Notes: See Annex for list of abbreviations and full names of organisations.

a(Yes) indicates indirect involvement in bargaining via lower-level affiliates or higher-level affiliations; ** = de facto negotiations or consultation. b (Yes) indicates consultation takes place only indirectly via higher-level affiliations. c National affiliations are in italics. For the national level, only cross-sectoral (peak level) associations are listed. For the European level, only sectoral associations are listed. Affiliations in brackets are indirect via lower level affiliates or higher level affiliations.

n.a. = not available

Source: EIRO national centres, 2009

The fact that these groups usually also work in areas other than the education sector and represent only a sub-group of the sector at the same time, results in sectionalist overlaps of the domains of these unions with the education sector.

Finally, overlap in relation to the education sector usually results from trade unions with general or at least cross-sectoral domains. This pattern applies to:

Overall, pronounced pluralism characterises the trade union system. A multi-union situation is found in all countries but Latvia. In the remaining countries, only the Czech Republic, Estonia, Slovakia and Slovenia record no more than three trade unions in the sector. This pluralism is most accentuated in Portugal and Italy, with 36 and 24 trade unions, respectively.

As the trade union domains frequently overlap with the demarcation of the sector, so do their domains with one another in the case of those countries with a pluralist trade union ‘landscape’ in the sector. Table 3 provides information about these inter-union domain overlaps. Inter-union overlaps of domains are endemic. In all countries with more than one sector-related trade union apart from four (Austria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic and Greece), the domain of any of the trade unions overlaps with the domain of at least another. As a consequence, competitive inter-union relationships are reported for a number of countries:

Belgium, where the smaller unions dispute the criteria of representativeness;

Italy, where the trade unions active in the public sector compete for members to achieve representative status (a prerequisite to participate in collective bargaining);

Malta, where an inter-union dispute arose in 2004 when a newly established trade union in the university sector claimed full and exclusive representation of academic staff, including collective bargaining rights (the conflict was settled by a tribunal in 2007);

Looking at the trade union membership data, it becomes apparent that female employees make up the majority group in almost three-fourths of the trade unions for which membership figures by gender are available. This finding largely corresponds to the sector’s employment, which is dominated by female employees (see Table 2). In cases where the trade union’s domain is focused on occupations dominated by women, the percentage of female union members may exceed 80% or even 90%.

Membership of the sector-related trade unions is voluntary in all cases of the 27 Member States under consideration.

The absolute numbers of trade union members differ widely, ranging from more than two million to only a few dozens. This considerable variation reflects differences in the size of the economy and the comprehensiveness of the membership domain, rather than the ability to attract members. Compared with total membership, the sector-specific membership is fairly small in several trade unions reflecting the high level of fragmentation of the organisational ‘landscape’ of labour in many Member States.

Density corrects for differences in the country size and so this is the measure of membership strength that is more appropriate to a comparative analysis.

Domain density is over 50% in the case of 26.0% of the trade unions which document figures on density.

Of those trade unions for which data area available, 43.3% organise fewer than 15% of the employees within their domain.

The remaining trade unions (30.8%) record a density of between 15% and 50% of their potential members.

These results indicate that the overall domain density of the sector-related trade unions is relatively low, even though 19.2% gather 70% or more of the employees covered by their domain. The large proportion of trade unions with very low domain density ratios probably results from the highly pluralistic associational landscape in several countries, where a number of teachers’ trade unions co-exist with each other in competing for members. However, domain density data are recorded for only less than half of the 216 sector-related trade unions in Table 3 and therefore these figures should be treated with caution.

In general, the density of the sector-related trade unions in the education sector largely corresponds with their relatively low overall domain densities. When the sectoral domain density of the trade unions is taken into account (this tends to be higher than their sectoral density for the reasons outlined above), their density in the education sector tends to be largely equal to the density ratio referring to their domain on aggregate. For those trade unions for which data are available:

sectoral domain density is over 50% in the case of 26.5%;

44.6% record a sectoral domain density lower than 15%;

28.9% record a sectoral domain density of between 15% and 50%.

No data are available for more than half of the sector-related trade unions.

There is no clear trend for those trade unions for which figures on both measures (sectoral domain density and domain density on aggregate) are recorded. There are as many trade unions with a sectoral domain density higher compared with their aggregate density as trade unions showing the reverse relationship. In the vast majority of the cases, the densities are equal. This is not surprising given that, due to their sectionalist membership domain in relation to the sector, domain density and sectoral domain density must be identical for most sector-related trade unions.

In line with many other service industries (in the private sector), the density of the education sector appears to be rather low. This finding is surprising in so far as education in most countries covers that part of the public sector where unionisation usually tends to be higher than in the private sector. However, low density ratios for the trade unions in the education sector are likely to ensue from the high fragmentation of the sector-related trade union systems of many Member States rather than from generally low unionisation rates in the sector. In the public segment of the education sector at least, unionisation appears to be high in most countries as indicated by high densities of those trade unions that mainly or exclusively organise public sector employees. This is the case, for instance, of:

GÖD and the Municipal Employees’ and Arts, Media, Sports and Liberal Professions’ Union (GdG-KMSfB) of Austria;

Employer organisations

Tables 5 and 6 present membership and density data, respectively, for the employer organisations in the education sector. Sector-related employer organisations are documented for all the 27 countries under consideration apart from 10 (Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Romania and Slovenia). All the listed employer organisations, for which related data are available, are party to sector-related collective bargaining/collective employment regulation (Table 7).

The unit of membership of an employer organisation in the education sector may vary from one organisation and country to the other. The dualistic nature of the sector with its public–private structure means that membership of sector-related employer organisations may, for example, consist of:

private training and further training institutions;

schools at any level;

universities;

municipal employers of any kind;

state authorities;

state agencies and separately managed bodies on behalf of state authorities;

ecclesiastical institutions;

driving schools.

Likewise, their legal form may vary from public law bodies with frequently compulsory membership to private law associations with usually voluntary membership. However, in many countries it is the central state or regional authorities themselves which (either exclusively or in parallel with employer organisations) conduct negotiations with organised labour or unilaterally determine the employment conditions on behalf of the sector.

About 15% of the employer organisations for which related data are available can rely on obligatory membership; the situation is not clear for 15 organisations. The representativeness of all other employer organisations rests on voluntary membership.

Because of the dualistic structure of the education sector, separate employer associations have frequently been set up for the public and the private segment of the sector, although there are also borderline cases where employer organisations may organise both public entities and private establishments.

In the public segment of education, fewer employer organisations appear to have been established compared with the private segment. This is because public authorities, state bodies, ministries, public agencies, etc. frequently have the right to either engage in collective bargaining themselves or unilaterally determine the terms of employment of the public employees (including public education employees) under their jurisdiction. As they are closely involved in this determination process, there is no reason (and sometimes no legal basis) for delegating a negotiating mandate to an intermediate instance. In contrast, in the private education sector, voluntary employer organisations can regularly enter free collective bargaining on behalf of their (private law) members.

Across the 27 countries under consideration, 83 associations could be identified including authorities/ministries that are a member of the relevant European-level employer organisation, European Federation of Education Employers (EFEE). In three (Cyprus, Hungary and Malta) of the 19 countries where sector-related employer organisations/authorities exist, only one single industrial relations actor on the employer side has been established.

Of the employer organisations listed in Table 6 for which related data are available, 62.0% and 38.0%, respectively, have demarcated their domain in a way that is sectional or sectionalistically overlaps with regard to the education sector. The high incidence of sectionalist domains emanates mainly from the fact that the sector-related employer organisations usually specify their domain in terms of activities, thus covering only part of the education sector such as universities, private schools, vocational training institutions, language schools, etc. Sectionalist overlaps often result from domains that cover areas of the public sector which are broader than education (often covering public administration at central and/or local level), while they do not cover private sector activities. There are no domain demarcations that are overlapping with regard to, or congruent with, the sector.

In those 16 countries with a pluralist structure in relation to industrial relations actors on the employer side, these organisations and authorities have largely managed to arrive at non-competing relationships. Their activities are complementary to each other as a result of inter-organisational differentiation by membership demarcation.

The unit of membership given in Table 5 varies between employer organisations such that the figures are not strictly comparable across associations and countries. As far as public entities such as authorities and ministries are concerned, no unit of membership can reasonably be identified and no membership figures can thus be recorded for these employers.

The data on membership for the voluntary employer organisations show a very high density for most of these organisations; many report a density level within their (sectoral) domain that is equal or close to 100% in terms of both members and employees. Densities are of course significantly lower with regard to the sector in total, which results from domain demarcations that do not entirely cover the sector. The main reason for the extremely high levels of domain density in the public segment of the sector is the public law status of the employers/employer organisations; in some cases, some form of compulsion may also be associated with the voluntary employer organisations. Low densities are found only rarely among the private sector associations.

cNational affiliations are in italics. For the national level, only cross-sectoral (peak level) associations are listed. For the European level, only sectoral associations are listed. Affiliations in brackets are indirect via lower level affiliates or higher level affiliations.

n.a. = not available.

Source: EIRO national centres, 2009

Collective employment regulation and its actors

Table 4 lists all those trade unions engaged in sector-related collective bargaining/regulation. Several cases of competition for bargaining and consultation capacities have been identified due to:

the numerous overlaps of inter-union domain;

often unclear domain demarcation;

some rivalry for members.

In the case of the sector-related employer organisations, no cases of competition over collective employment regulation capacities have been reported.

Table 8 provides an overview of the system of sector-related collective regulation in the 26 countries under consideration. The importance of collective bargaining as a means of employment regulation is measured by calculating the total number of employees covered by collective bargaining as a proportion of the total number of employees within a certain segment of the economy (Traxler et al, 2001). Accordingly, the sector’s rate of collective bargaining coverage is defined as the ratio of the number of employees covered by any kind of collective agreement to the total number of employees in the sector.

For the purpose of this study, this concept of calculating the intensity of employment regulation is extended to areas where collective bargaining in the genuine sense is not established but other forms of collective regulation (that is, de facto negotiations and consultation) take place – a frequent occurrence in the public segment of the education sector. This means that, in addition to the rate of collective bargaining coverage, the rate of collective employment regulation is calculated for each country. In line with the definition of collective bargaining coverage, the sector’s rate of collective employment regulation coverage is defined as the ratio of the number of employees covered by any kind of collective regulation (that is, collective bargaining, de facto negotiations and consultation) to the total number of employees in the sector.

To delineate the bargaining system, two further indicators are used: The first indicator refers to the relevance of multi-employer bargaining compared with single-employer bargaining. Multi-employer bargaining is defined as being conducted by an employer organisation on behalf of the employer side. In the case of single-employer bargaining, the company or its divisions is the party to the agreement. This includes the cases where two or more companies jointly negotiate an agreement. The relative importance of multi-employer bargaining, measured as a percentage of the total number of employees covered by a collective agreement, therefore provides an indication of the impact of the employer organisations on the overall collective bargaining process.

However, this indicator is relevant only with regard to the private segment of the education sector since the distinction between single-employer and multi-employer bargaining is not applicable to large parts of the public segment. Although some units within the public segment may conduct single-employer bargaining, in most cases the boundaries between single- and multi-employer bargaining are blurred. This becomes evident in cases where an employer representative conducts collective bargaining on behalf of a single authority, but the results are subsequently ratified also by other authorities. Moreover, the question arises as to whether an all-encompassing collective entity (such as a central authority embracing a large number of administrative units) should be classified as an individual employer or not. Since a meaningful distinction between single- and multi-employer bargaining and negotiations is not possible with regard to the public segment of the education sector, this indicator is primarily employed with regard to the private education segment for the purpose of this study.

The second indicator considers whether statutory extension schemes have been applied to the sector. For reasons of brevity, this analysis is confined to extension schemes that widen the scope of a collective agreement to employers not affiliated to the signatory employer organisation; extension regulations targeting the employees are therefore not included in the research. Regulations concerning the employees are not significant to this analysis for two reasons. First, extending a collective agreement to the employees who are not unionised in the company covered by the collective agreement is a standard of the International Labour Organization (ILO), aside from any national legislation. Secondly, employers have good reason to extend a collective agreement concluded by them, even when they are not formally obliged to do so; otherwise, they would set an incentive for their workforce to unionise.

In comparison with employee-related extension procedures, schemes that target the employers are far more significant for the strength of collective bargaining in general and multi-employer bargaining in particular. This is because the employers are capable of refraining from both joining an employer organisation and entering single-employer bargaining in the context of a purely voluntaristic system. Therefore, employer-related extension practices increase the coverage of multi-employer bargaining. Moreover, when it is pervasive, an extension agreement may encourage more employers to join the controlling employer organisation; such a move then enables them to participate in the bargaining process and to benefit from the organisation’s related services in a situation where the respective collective agreement will bind them in any case (Traxler et al, 2001).

Table 8: System of sectoral collective bargaining, 2007–2008

Country

Collective regulation coveragea (%b)

Genuine collective bargaining (GCB) (%b)

Extension practicec

AT

90–95

20–25

None

BE

100

100

Pervasive

BG

46

46

None

CY

>90

>90

None

CZ

100

26

None

DE

n.a.

n.a.

None

DK

100

100

None

EE

n.a.

n.a.

None

EL

100

n.a.

Pervasive

ES

100

n.a.

Pervasive

FI

100

100

Pervasive

HU

40

40

None

IE

n.a. (>90 in public sector)

n.a.

Limited/exceptional

IT

~100

~100

(Pervasive)

LT

100

20–30

None

LU

n.a. (100 in public sector)

~0

None

LV

40–50

40–50

None

MT

>70

>70

Limited/exceptional

NL

90–100

90–100

None

PL

n.a.

~10

None

PT

~95

~18

Pervasive

RO

100

100

None

SE

80–100

80–100

Limited/exceptional

SI

Almost 100

Almost 100

None

SK

Almost 100

Almost 100

None

UK

n.a. (probably >80)

n.a. (probably >80)

None

Notes: a Genuine collective bargaining, de facto negotiations and consultation. b As a percentage of the sector’s total number of employees. c Extension practices (including functional equivalents to extension provisions, that is, obligatory membership and labour court rulings). Cases of functional equivalents are in brackets.

Source: EIRO national centres, 2009

Collective bargaining coverage

As outlined earlier, this study distinguishes two kinds of measurement of collective regulation intensity. Whereas collective regulation coverage in a broad sense relates to a wide range of activities aimed to regulate the employment terms (including genuine bargaining or a recurrent practice of de facto negotiations and/or consultation), collective bargaining coverage in a strict sense takes only genuine collective bargaining into account. Since the collective bargaining coverage rate for the sector is recorded only as unadjusted percentage (this means the percentage is not adjusted for employees who are not equipped with genuine bargaining rights), the collective regulation coverage rate must be as high as the genuine collective bargaining coverage rate (in cases where there is no form of employment regulation other than genuine bargaining) or higher (in cases where there are such forms of alternative employment regulation).

In terms of the sector’s collective regulation coverage, 16 of the 20 countries for which related data are available record a high coverage rate of at least 80%, in most cases coming close to or reaching 100%. There are only three countries (Bulgaria, Hungary and Latvia) that record sector-related collective regulation at a level below 50%, with collective employment regulation coverage rates of between 40% and 50%. The collective coverage rate for Malta is greater than 70%.

In at least these three countries, the employment terms of the majority of the education employees appear to be unilaterally determined by the authorities, without regular consultation with the trade unions. This may also be true for Estonia and Poland, but no related data have been reported for these countries. Nevertheless, it can be inferred that the industrial relations structures in the education sector are:

well-established in at least three-quarters of the 26 Member States studied – even if formal, genuine collective bargaining is scarce or completely lacking in these countries;

apparently underdeveloped in less than a quarter of the countries.

Closer examination reveals that:

collective employment regulation coverage rates are high in the EU15 (although there are no or only partial data available for Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg and the UK);

sectoral regulation standards vary widely between those countries joining the EU between 2004 and 2007.

High coverage rates for collective employment regulation may stem from genuine collective bargaining (GCB) or other forms of collective regulation, or a mixture of both.

In 11 countries (Belgium, Cyprus, Denmark, Finland, Italy, Malta, the Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Sweden) and probably the UK, high collective regulation coverage in the sector can be traced back to prevailing or exclusive genuine collective bargaining arrangements.

In at least six countries (Austria, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Poland and Portugal), little or no genuine collective bargaining takes place scarcely or is completely lacking.

Even if genuine bargaining plays only a minor part or is completely absent, collective regulation coverage may be very high as is the case of Austria, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, Portugal and probably Luxembourg. In these cases, de facto negotiations and/or regular consultation practices somehow replace genuine collective bargaining when it comes to determining the terms of employment (which often applies to the public segment of the sector), while genuine bargaining is, in at least part of these cases, more or less confined to the (smaller) private segment of the sector.

Conversely, the relatively low collective regulation coverage rates of Bulgaria, Hungary and Latvia originate exclusively from genuine bargaining arrangements (no other forms of collective employment regulation exist). The low collective bargaining coverage rate in Estonia may partially ensue from a refusal by the relevant associations representing cities and municipalities to enter negotiations on behalf of educational institutions with the trade unions. In Lithuania, reluctance on the side of school principals to recognise the established trade unions in the sector and to enter collective bargaining at enterprise level has been reported. A case of bargaining refusal has also been reported from Portugal with regard to private higher education. In the UK, the trade unions have questioned the recurrent practice of teachers in publicly owned schools having their pay determined by an independent body instead of by regular collective bargaining. Moreover, in the pre-primary education sector in the UK, private sector employers frequently refuse to recognise trade unions and thus bargaining.

In general, the high intensity of collective employment regulation in the education sector, with the exception of only a few central and eastern European countries, may be explained by several factors, which sometimes interact with each other. Highest collective bargaining/regulation coverage rates can be found in countries where multi-employer bargaining coincides with pervasive extension practices (as is the case of Belgium, Finland, Greece and Spain) and where centralisation of the employer representation by either administrative bodies (public sector) (as is the case of Austria and the Czech Republic) or representative employer organisations (public and private sector) (as is the case of Belgium, Denmark, Finland and Slovakia) is high. Moreover, the often still prevalent uniform nature of employment relationship(s) in the public segment of the education sector, which facilitates the aggregation of interests, is conducive to high collective employment regulation. This also holds for the generally high unionisation rates in public sector trade unions.

Participation in public policymaking

Interest associations may partake in public policy in two basic ways. First, they may be consulted by the authorities on matters affecting their members, and secondly, they may be represented on ‘corporatist’, in other words tripartite, committees and boards of policy concertation. This study considers only cases of consultation and corporatist participation that relate explicitly to sector-specific matters. Consultation processes are not necessarily institutionalised and, therefore, the organisations consulted by the authorities may vary according to the issues to be addressed and also over time, depending on changes in government. Moreover, the authorities may initiate a consultation process on occasional rather than a regular basis.

Given this variability, only those sector-related trade unions and employer organisations that are ‘usually’ consulted are flagged in Tables 3–7. Depending on country-specific regulations and practices, the sector-specific associations may directly or indirectly participate in public policy. Indirect participation takes place via their affiliation to a higher-level association which obtains participatory rights.

Trade unions

The vast majority of the 216 sector-related trade unions identified by this study are consulted regularly by the authorities and at least some of them in all the 27 Member States apart from Sweden (no information on consultation practices is available for any of the trade unions in Cyprus, France, Italy and Slovenia). Since a multi-union system has been established in all of these countries apart from Latvia, the possibility cannot be ruled out that the authorities favour certain trade unions over others or that the trade unions compete for participation rights. In at least 14 countries with a multi-union system where a noticeable practice of consultation is observed, any of the existing trade unions may take part in the consultation process. By contrast, there are at least three countries (Austria, Estonia and Slovakia) where consultation rights are awarded only to certain trade unions while others are left out of consideration. However, there is no evidence of inter-union conflicts over participation in public policy matters in the education sector in any of the countries.

Employer organisations

As is the case of the trade unions, most of the sector-related employer organisations are involved in consultation procedures, although for several organisations no related information is available. Finland and Sweden with their multi-organisation systems provide examples of selective consultation. In the other countries with pluralist systems and full information on consultation practices (Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Ireland, the Netherlands and the UK), all the sector’s organisations are consulted. In all countries with available information apart from Sweden (where employer organisations co-exist with trade unions), consultation rights are symmetrically attributed to the two sides of industry, in that at least one organisation on each side is consulted.

In those countries where an employer organisation does not exist, the employers are not necessarily excluded from consultation procedures. Under these circumstances, the employers themselves (often part of the authorities in the education sector) may be consulted. However, in cases where the employer is identical with the authority, the question of consultation tends to be pointless.

Tripartite participation

Turning from consultation to tripartite participation, the findings reveal that genuinely sector-specific tripartite bodies have been established in only three (Bulgaria, Hungary and Ireland) of the 26 countries under consideration. Table 9 lists only five bodies of this kind and summarises their main properties. Other bodies listed in some country reports are not taken into account in this study because they either do not specifically target the education sector or are not tripartite in the sense of a clear-cut discriminability of (state) authorities and employer organisations.

Table 9: Tripartite sector-specific boards of public policy in the education sector, 2007–2008)

Country

Name of the body and scope of activity

Origin

Unions participating

Business associations participating

BG

Sectoral Council for Tripartite Cooperation in the Ministry of Education, Youth and Science: employment and social security issues, training and qualification, career development, etc.

Statutory

BUT, ITTU, UE Podkrepa

BAPS

HU

Interest Reconciliation Council in Public Education: employment relations, income-related issues

Education Sector Performance Verification Group: assessment of progress made in delivering on the change and modernisation agenda set out for the sector

Agreement

n.a.

n.a.

Teacher Arbitration Board: conciliation and arbitration tasks

n.a.

n.a.

n.a.

Note: See Annex for list of abbreviations and full names of organisations.

n.a. = not available

Source: EIRO national centres, 2009

European level of interest representation

At European level, eligibility for consultation and participation in the social dialogue is linked to three criteria, as defined by the European Commission. Accordingly, a social partner organisation must have the following attributes:

be cross-industry or relate to specific sectors or categories, and be organised at European level;

consist of organisations that are themselves an integral and recognised part of Member States’ social partner structures and which have the capacity to negotiate agreements, as well as being representative of all Member States, as far as possible;

have adequate structures to ensure their effective participation in the consultation process.

Regarding social dialogue, the constituent feature is the ability of such organisations to negotiate on behalf of their members and to conclude binding agreements. Accordingly, this section on European associations of the education sector analyses the membership domain, the composition of their membership and the ability to negotiate of these organisations.

As detailed below, three sector-related European associations on the employee side are particularly significant in the education sector. The three are:

All are directly involved in the European sectoral social dialogue for the education sector.

Sector-related employer interests, on the other hand, are organised exclusively by EFEE, which likewise participates in the European sectoral social dialogue. EFEE, which was created in February 2009, is a member organisation of the European Centre of Employees and Enterprises providing Public Services (CEEP).

A new European Sectoral Social Dialogue Committee for Education (ESSDE) was set up by the European Commission on 11 June 2010 (EU1006081I). The main actors within this committee are ETUCE on the employee side and EFEE on the employer side. The trade union delegation to the committee is composed of representatives of ETUCE, EPSU and CESI, whereas the employer delegation is composed only of EFEE representatives. On the employee side, according to EPSU, ETUCE holds the lead responsibility in the sector’s social dialogue area, whereas EPSU has agreed with ETUCE to participate as ‘additional partner on the workers’ side in the ESSDE’ and to ‘have full rights’ in the committee. The role of CESI within the ESSDE appears to be similar to those of EPSU.

All the four sector-related European associations on the two sides of industry are classified by the European Commission as a social partner organisation consulted under Article 154 of the EC Treaty. Hence, the analysis below concentrates on these four European organisations, while providing supplementary information on others linked to the sector’s national industrial relations actors.

Membership domain

The membership domain of ETUCE, which is affiliated to the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC), largely corresponds with the education sector as defined for the purpose of this study, although there may be some peripheral areas, such as driving school activities, which do not fall with the organisation’s domain. Nevertheless, ETUCE’s domain is largely congruent with the education sector.

As indicated by its name, the ETUC-affiliated EPSU organises public services. Therefore its membership domain sectionalistically overlaps in relation to the education sector, which is made up of both a public and private segment. In contrast, CESI is a general trade union confederation and has an unspecific membership domain that covers both national and European trade unions (including umbrella organisations) and overlaps with regard to the sector.

On the employer side, EFEE represents education ministries, regional and local authorities, state agencies and other types of employer organisations in the field of education. Its domain is thus largely congruent with the education sector.

Membership composition

The country coverage of ETUCE, EPSU, CESI and EFEE extends beyond the 27 countries examined in this study, but the report considers only the 27 Member States.

Employee side

Table 10 lists the membership of for ETUCE, EPSU and CESI of sector-related trade unions drawn from the country reports.

Notes: See Annex for list of abbreviations and full names of organisations.

aMembership list confined to the sector-related associations of the countries under consideration. b Associations in brackets are sector-related unions listed in Tables 3 and 4 that are indirectly affiliated via national higher-order associations or lower-level affiliates and/or, in the case of CESI, via affiliation to Eurofedop. c Not involved in collective regulation. d Indirectly involved in collective regulation via higher- or lower-level affiliations. e No information available on involvement in sector-related collective regulation.

Source: EIRO national centres, 2009

All the countries under consideration have at least one trade union in the education sector affiliated to ETUCE. There is multiple memberships in most countries but only one in Austria, Latvia, Malta and Slovenia. On aggregate, ETUCE counts 97 direct and a number of indirect (via national higher-order associations or lower-level affiliates) sector-related affiliations from the countries under examination in this study. Almost half the 216 trade unions listed in Tables 3 and 4 are directly affiliated to ETUCE. From the information available from the sectoral membership of the national trade unions on their relative strength, it can be concluded that ETUCE covers the sector’s most important labour representatives in most countries. Of the 85 direct ETUCE members for which related data are available, 83 are involved in bargaining or ‘quasi-bargaining’ related to the education sector; two affiliates from Luxembourg and Slovakia are not.

EPSU has at least one sector-related member union is in all but 11 countries (Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia). In most countries multiple memberships occur, but there is only one affiliation in five countries (Cyprus, Germany, Ireland, Malta and Spain). In total, EPSU has 32 direct and several indirect sector-related affiliations from the 27 countries under its umbrella. About 15% of the 216 sector-related trade unions listed in Tables 3 and 4 are directly affiliated to EPSU. The relative weight of the sector-related EPSU affiliates in terms of their membership strength in the sector is hard to assess. However, all of the 32 direct EPSU members for which related data are available are involved in sector-related bargaining or ‘quasi-bargaining’.

Table 10 also lists the members of CESI. Of the 27 countries under consideration, CESI has 12 under its umbrella through associational direct or indirect members from these countries. Multiple memberships (including indirect members) exist in five (Austria, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg and Spain) of these 12 countries, CESI counts 19 direct and indirect sector-related affiliates from the 27 countries under consideration. Twelve or about 6% of the trade unions listed in Tables 3 and 4 are directly affiliated to CESI. In those countries where CESI affiliations occur, trade unions both with high and low membership strength in the sector are frequently covered. At least 17of the 19 direct and indirect CESI affiliates are involved in sector-related collective bargaining/regulation.

In comparison with ETUCE, which records an extraordinarily high level of representativeness in education (particularly in terms of countries and absolute numbers of affiliations), both EPSU and CESI appear to be less present in the sector. This is due to their role to ‘bring a complement of representativity’ on the employee side in the sectoral social dialogue, as laid down in a draft of ESSDE’s internal rules of procedure.

Employer side

Table 11 lists the sector-related members of EFEE. Since EFEE is affiliated to CEEP, all EFEE members are at least indirectly affiliated to CEEP. In November 2010, EFEE had 21 members from 16 Member States, including associational interest organisations as well as authorities and state bodies such as ministries. However, in line with the decision to exclude single employers from the scope of this study, only authorities/ministries affiliated to EFEE are included. All other authorities and state bodies cannot be taken into account for the purpose of this study because the vast numbers mean they cannot be captured individually.

Table 11: Members of EFEE, 2009a

Country

Members

AT

–

BE

SeGECb, AGPEb

BG

–

CY

MECb

CZ

–

DE

TdLb

DK

KLb

EE

–

EL

–

ES

MoEb

FI

KTb, AFIEEb

FR

–

HU

KIMSZb

IE

IVEAb

IT

ARANb

LT

–

LU

–

LV

MoESb

MT

MEDCb

NL

PECb, SECb

PL

–

PT

MoEb

RO

–

SE

SALARb

SI

–

SK

EFEE Slovakiab

UK

LGEb, UCEAb, AoCb

Negotiating mandate

General mandate, conferred by the members

Notes: See Annex for list of abbreviations and full names of organisations.

aMembership list confined to the sector-related associations of the countries under consideration. b Involved in collective regulation.

Source: EIRO national centres, 2009

The 16 countries with EFEE affiliations appear to cover the majority part of the sector in the 27 countries under consideration in terms of employees. Multiple memberships can be found in Belgium, Finland, the Netherlands and the UK.

About a quarter of the sector-related employer organisations/authorities are affiliated to EFEE (Table 7). However, taking the sectoral membership data of the affiliated organisations/bodies as an indicator of their relative significance does not give a clear picture of whether the most important associations/bodies are affiliated because the sectoral domain density in terms of employees tends to be very high with almost all employer organisations, irrespective of their affiliation to EFEE. The same holds true for the criterion of the role of the organisations/bodies in collective bargaining/regulation, which also does not show a clear trend in this respect since virtually all sector-related organisations engage in the various forms of employment regulation.

EFEE members cover collective employment regulation in all the 16 countries where they are present. The fact that 11 of the 27 Member States are not covered accounts for the significantly lower number compared to the number (at least 26) of countries where sector-related collective bargaining/regulation is conducted by affiliates of ETUCE, its main European-level counterpart for the trade unions in the sector. This indicates that there are several sector-related employer organisations/state bodies across the EU not affiliated to EFEE that are involved in sector-related collective bargaining/regulation.

Capacity to negotiate

The third criterion of representativeness at the European level refers to an organisation’s capacity to negotiate on behalf of its members. ETUCE and EPSU are given a mandate to negotiate in matters of the European social dialogue to their statutes. Likewise, CESI has a general negotiating mandate on behalf of its members.

On the employer side, EFEE has the capacity to negotiate on behalf of its members in matters of the European sectoral social dialogue through their endorsement of its articles of association.

As a proof of the weight of ETUCE, EPSU and CESI on the employee side and EFEE on the employer side, it is useful to look at other European organisations that may be important representatives of the sector. This can be done by reviewing the other European organisations to which the sector-related trade unions and employer associations are affiliated.

For the trade unions, these affiliations are listed in Table 4 which shows there are numerous affiliations to European organisations other than ETUCE, EPSU and CESI. However, these memberships are so widely dispersed across the trade unions and countries that clusters of affiliations are difficult to find. For reasons of brevity, only those European organisations that cover at least three countries are listed below:

European Transport Workers’ Federation (ETF), with six affiliations and three countries;

European Federation of Food, Agriculture and Tourism Trade Unions (EFFAT), European Metalworkers Federation (EMF) and the Council of European Professional and Managerial Staff (Eurocadres), with four affiliations and three countries each;

European Mine, Chemical and Energy Workers’ Federation (EMCEF), with three affiliations and three countries.

However, the affiliations listed in Table 7 may not necessarily be exhaustive. Nevertheless and despite the large number of affiliations to European organisations other than ETUCE, EPSU and CESI, this overview underlines the status of these three associations as the sector’s principal labour representatives. This is primarily because some of the affiliations to other European organisations, in particular UNI-Europa, reflect the overlapping domains of the affiliates rather than a real reference of the affiliations as such to the education sector.

Table 7 provides a similar overview of European organisations to which the sector-related employer organisations are affiliated. The organisational links of sector-related employer associations with European federations are of particular interest in two cases:

CEEP, with 26 direct and indirect affiliations covering 16 countries;

Council of European Municipalities and Regions (CEMR), with four affiliations covering four countries.

But although all the 21 indirect affiliations to CEEP occur through membership of EFEE (a member of the cross-sectoral CEEP), neither the five direct affiliations to CEEP nor the four direct affiliations to CEMR really question the alleged role of EFEE as the unmatched European industrial relations actor on behalf of the employers in the sector – even though both CEEP and CEMR claim to gather member associations in a field of activity which is (sectionalistically) overlapping in relation to the education sector. According to an EFEE consultant, affiliation to sectoral EFEE is entirely compatible with affiliation to cross-sectoral CEEP without any competition for members.

EFEE as the recognised European social partner on behalf of the employer side in the sector has to be considered the principal European voice of the employers in education. This is mainly because EFEE is the only European employer organisation which focuses exclusively on education employers and represents at least part of the most important national employers in education in Europe.

Commentary

This study has highlighted some key properties of the representational system of the education sector compared with other sectors.

At national level, pronounced pluralism characterises the associational system of both the labour and the employer side, in particular, with regard to the latter, in the private segment of the sector. In the public segment, government entities equipped with comprehensive competences in matters of industrial relations sometimes allow the emergence of employer organisations only in niches of public education. Nevertheless, the number of employer organisations is relatively high, along with an extremely high number of trade unions within an associational system with large-scale proliferation tendencies. These highly pluralist structures on the employee side can be traced back to the sector’s traditional, marked differentiation along numerous well-demarcated occupational, professional as well as institutional lines.

While employer densities are generally very high, union densities at national level, in line with most other services, tend to be low. This is somewhat surprising given that public ownership, which characterises part of the sector, buttresses the organisation of both sides of industry. However, low density ratios for the sector-related trade unions are likely to ensue from the very high fragmentation of the employee representation systems rather than from the generally low unionisation rates in the sector. In some countries, such as Portugal, there is a multiplicity of small trade unions with very low densities, which are likely to cause a statistical bias to the disadvantage of the larger fellow unions, which usually record higher densities. Generally, at least in the public segment of education, unionisation appears to be high in most countries.

High levels of organisation at least on the employer side, along with encompassing government bodies operating as industrial relations actors, translate into high levels of collective employment regulation, either in the form of genuine collective bargaining or de facto negotiations and consultation. This applies especially ‘older’ Member States (EU15), whereas the employment regulation coverage varies between the 2004–2007 accession countries.

The nature of interest representation at European level contrasts somewhat between the two sides of industry. On the employer side, the membership unit of EFEE, which was initially a platform of government employers in education, is a mixture of government bodies, agencies, ministries as well as private law employer organisations. However, since the main emphasis of EFEE is on the public sector employers, several of the private sector employer organisations are affiliated, if at all, to European employer organisations other than the main industrial relations actor. In contrast, on the employee side, the role of ETUCE as the European voice of organised labour appears to be unmatched, given its very high number of affiliations covering all 27 Member States.